BASEBALL

BASEBALL; To Yankee Second Baseman, Throwing Is No Idle Thought

By ERICA GOODE

Published: June 17, 2000

A desperately frustrated Yankee second baseman and a 19th-century Russian novelist have little in common, one might think.

But Chuck Knoblauch is, in a way, in the same pickle as Leo Tolstoy was as a child, when his brother challenged him to stand in a corner until he could stop thinking about white bears.

Tolstoy, the legend has it, stood in that corner for quite a while, with white bears trooping through his mind.

Tolstoy's brush with obsession was trivial, but Knoblauch, who left a ballgame in frustration Thursday night after his inability to make simple throws to first base resulted in three errors, has a lot more at stake. Knoblauch returned to the team last night and received a standing ovation in the first inning. He fielded one pop-up and made no throws in a 3-1 loss to the White Sox. [Page D1.]

The problem, sports psychologists surmised yesterday, is that an action that Knoblauch has instinctively performed thousands of times is suddenly the object of conscious thought.

In the past two years the infielder who once won a Gold Glove award for his defense has been plagued by a rash of throwing errors.

Just imagine, suggested Rick Wolff, who worked with the Cleveland Indians from 1989 to 1994 and now is in private practice in Westchester County, consciously analyzing how to place your legs each time you go down a flight of stairs.

''Ballplayers, by the time they get to the major leagues, know how to automatically run from home to first; they know how to throw a ball,'' Mr. Wolff said. ''They don't think about that stuff. But when you start thinking about these things, when you start thinking, 'How much pressure should I put into my throw? Should I try to grip the ball a certain way?' you're gone.''

Or as the baseball axiom goes: Thinking is stinking.

Of course, the more a ballplayer -- or a golfer or a football player or anyone else abruptly thrust into obsession -- tries to stop thinking, the more stubborn the thoughts become.

Dr. Daniel Wegner, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, knows a lot about such problems, having become interested in such lapses of mental controls because of the Tolstoy legend. But he studies these problems mostly in the laboratory, though he has also carried his experiments to the putting green.

Dr. Wegner and his colleagues have found that they can ''create an obsession in a matter of minutes'' just by instructing their subjects, usually college students, to try not to think about something -- sex, for example, or an old flame.

And stressful situations, Dr. Wegner said, make the struggle for mental control even harder.

''Tiny little things just grow, mostly by our attempts to stop them,'' he said. ''It's almost like trying to put it out of your mind causes it to be put into indelible type.''

Dr. Wegner has a reverse strategy for combatting such obsessional thoughts: he tells people that they should think about -- rather than banish -- the unwanted thoughts.

''What happens is that the thought gets tired and goes away,'' he said.

Knoblauch's situation, he said, ''sounds like an extreme case.''

He suggested that perhaps the infielder should try to throw badly; after making 100 such throws, he might stop focusing on it and thereby start tossing perfect strikes.

Sports psychologists who work with major league players have their own methods, and some said yesterday that they were dubious about Dr. Wegner's approach.

But they agreed that ballplayers who have problems like Knoblauch's are struggling more with their minds than with their bodies.

And while there are famous cases involving other baseball players -- most notably Steve Blass and Mark Wohlers, both pitchers, Steve Sax, another second baseman, and Mackey Sasser, a catcher -- such difficulties are more common than fans realize, they said.

The underlying cause and the solution may be different for each struggling athlete, they said.

Mr. Wolff, who estimates that three or four major league and college players falter in similar ways each season, said his strategy was to try to get players to focus on something else.

''I call it, for the lack of a better term, distraction therapy,'' he said, ''meaning that instead of letting them get caught up in paranoia or gripped by fear, you try to distract them with another thought.''

The pressures on ballplayers are so intense, Mr. Wolff said -- great enough Thursday night to drive Knoblauch from the stadium -- that some athletes try to hide from them.

As in Knoblauch's case, the problem escalates in the glare of media attention and becomes a label the player often finds hard to shed.

The ballplayer's teammates, he added, are also under pressure.

''What do you say to a guy like that?'' Mr. Wolff said. ''Don't worry about it? No sweat? Take it easy? Deep down in their minds, they're thinking, 'I hope it's not contagious.' ''

Dr. Charles Maher, a professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, who now works with the Cleveland Indians, said that the franchise tries to spot emerging difficulties and work with players before things get worse.

''They are confused,'' he said. ''They are tense. They have to see that the people who are trying to help them have a plan, and feel confident.''

Dr. Maher said that last season two Cleveland players -- whom he declined to name -- started having problems with basic technique. Team psychologists began working with the ballplayers immediately, he said, and successfully headed off further difficulties.

The Yankees, who did not respond to calls asking for comment, had Knoblauch talk to a team counselor during the playoffs two years ago, after the second baseman argued with an umpire rather than complete a play.

While fans and commentators have speculated that stresses in Knoblauch's personal life -- his father suffers from Alzheimer's disease -- might be contributing to his troubles, Dr. Maher and Mr. Wolff said they had found little correlation between such outside stresses and the mental glitches that for a major leaguer can turn every game into torture.

''There's no rhyme or reason to this,'' Mr. Wolff said. ''We all have stress in our lives, and major leaguers have stress. I've seen guys who have no care in the world and they say, 'Rick, I can't make this play.' ''

Sax, who in 1983 as a second baseman for the Dodgers had difficulties almost identical to Knoblauch's, said he did not remember being under particular stress at the time. But he remembered, he said, what it felt like, and could guess at what Knoblauch was feeling now.

''It's the toughest thing I've ever gone through,'' said Sax, now an analyst for Fox Sport Net's Baseball Today. ''It's completely unexplainable. It's so awful, and everybody in the world is watching you.''

When his problem peaked, he said, he stood on the field and prayed: ''Please, please don't hit it to me. Please don't hit the ball to me.''

At first he hated himself for letting down the team. Then he felt sorry for himself. Then he got angry.

''I got really ticked and I beat this thing,'' Sax said. ''I didn't turn my back on it. I bit it back.''

Now, he said, he is glad he went through the ordeal. ''It made me a better person,'' he said. ''It put things in perspective and it made me a better player.''